The emissions are going right back up as things unlock.

Consumption is back to being more and more and more mindless

We’re starting to use more fuel and travel more

We’re compensating for time lost like nobody’s business.

Ecommerce and online buying went through the roof!

Global trade in the trivial and ridiculous is inching back up again.

We’ve also added an industry or two, around more fear —

And investments in more are suddenly kosher — no questions asked.

The planet is back under the same level of threat. Maybe more.

Your investments are perfectly safe.

दफ़न करो सब जो गुज़र गया

चलो, आगे की सोचें

दफ़न वो सब जो बिखर गया

क्यों सतह खरोंचें?

जल जाये ओझल हो जाये

जो भी जी झंझोले

मौन के कुछ पल हो जाएं

फिर मौक टटोलें ?

क्यूंकि सबकी हार में ही

कुछों की जीत है

चिताओं पे हाथ सेकना

सदियों की रीत है

सन्नाटों की हर चीख से ही

कल के साम्राज्य बनेंगे

लूट के दी भीख से ही

ऐश्वर्य के हाथ सनेंगे

और कइयों पर कुछ

हमेशा राज करेंगे।

Bury that which is no more

Let’s look at tomorrow

Bury that which we demolished

Why prolong sorrow?

…

Gather for the storm. Or anyway.

Form cliques, share privilege.

Share the same goals of keeping others out

So somehow, you have more of what’s around

And lesser everyday, but still — whatever’s left.

Or grab and store, just in case.

(Who knows when we might need ten times more?)

The waters rise. The siege prolongs.

The dykes and citadels will not hold forever.

The pretence of certainty fades.

The embrace of the forever, the uncertain, the ever-changing

That’s inevitable.

Wish we’d remembered to embrace it first,

And build along with, not against,

Not keep outside our walls.

(I was about to write this as an FB post, but decided to ‘hide’ it deeper, and make it more permanent, so a post here)

People have been responding to the crazy crises that Covid throws up everyday in various ways.

I’m now starting to see various networks, including corporate and alumni efforts now to share our privilege and create a larger privilege pool for ‘members’ to dip into, not try and fix it so that nobody needs privilege.

I was reminded of the “private sufficiency, public riches” approach that I’d read about and that we sorely miss in most…

Anger, gloom, hope, fear

Glimpse horror right here

From far away, yet close at hand

Ever more, ever near

Death, diseases, incessant fires

The spectacle of funeral, funereal pyres

Cries, pleas you try respond to

Win some, lose more - the spirit tires.

Many years ago, I completely randomly created a group on FB called Project 2048. Today, I watched Seaspiracy, finally, which reiterated the threat of the oceans being emptied out by that date if we continued doing what we’re doing. The claim might be not literally true, but it’s still a strong indicator of the damage we’re causing.

Given the complexity of the economic web interwoven with the technological one that we’ve created, and give the level at which our lives, aspirations and emotions are now interlinked with the destruction of everything around us, and eventually us, I’ll admit I wonder…

When we both existed

Inside the axes our senses can feel

The passing of time

Always had the possibility

of our intersections and moments shared

In different frames, made from a million different dimensions

Most unknown to my little self

— you in the free, the unending, I still trapped —

Time is merely waves

And the boats we sail in drift away

Tossing around in the infinite

Connected through the vastness

Yet — to each other — forever lost.

The thread has ended

The story over, permanently part of ours

No prose added from it anymore

To the large book of stories being written

The image frozen

The voice young for eternity

In scattered, ever more diffused memories

As we all age,

Older, weaker, wiser because what-else

You will, forever

In the blissful state you were in

be forty four.